Find Retailers Who Are Committed to Your Product's Success

Will Yakowicz is a staff writer for Inc. magazine. He has reported from the West Bank and Moscow for Tablet Magazine; covered business, crime, and local politics for The Brooklyn Paper; and was the editor of Park Slope Patch. He lives in Brooklyn, New York.

Sales is always going to require extra effort until your company gains traction with clients. A key way to increase sales in those early stages is to find the right retailers who care about your business, and want you to do well.

"The biggest of all hustles is sales--selling to large accounts, small accounts, building partnerships with retailers," says Jeffrey Hollender, the co-founder of condom company Sustain, in an Inc. Trep Life mini-documentary. "The way we look at it is that it's not just about getting the product on the shelf, it's about building the right relationships with those retailers who are committed to helping us succeed."

Sustain, which was founded in 2013, markets its environmentally-friendly condoms to women in their 20s--a sea change from most condom companies, which rely on ad campaigns targeted toward men. Sustain found that 40 percent of condoms are purchased by women, so the company is concentrating on that market, while also promoting a message about practicing safe sex.

"We're focused on changing the way women think about changing their sexual health. Behavior change is always the hardest kind of change to facilitate. In order for us to be successful, I think that's the biggest barrier we have to overcome," Hollender says.

Hollender knows that more shelf space doesn't necessarily mean people's behavior will change, however, so Sustain has been forging relationships with retailers who believe in its female empowerment message. Watch Hollender and his daughter and co-founder Meika talk business strategy, entrepreneurship, and more in the Trep Life video below.

Sustain: What It's Like When the Family Business Is Condoms

Father-daughter founding team Meika and Jeffrey Hollender have built a fair-trade condom company aimed at women in their twenties. This is their grind, hustle and payoff.